Internet access via wireless local area networks is now commonplace. IEEE's 802.11 standard is the most popular wireless local area network standard, and is implemented in a huge number of access points and wireless devices. The operation of a wireless Local Area Network operating in accordance with the IEEE 802.11 standard is discussed in chapter 4 of Martin Sauter's book, “Communication Systems for the Mobile Information Society”, published by John Wiley and Sons in 2006.
European Patent Application No. 2 632 071 discloses a method of operating an access point which enables the access point, when starting up, to select one of the available radio channels to provide connectivity between the access point and nearby client devices. The access point tests the quality of each of the channels by first sending a probe response message to a client device at a low power, and if no acknowledgment is received from the client device, sending a probe response at a higher power, and so on, until an acknowledgment is received from the client station, or a probe response is sent at a maximum power. The access point selects the channel on which the least number of probe responses have to be sent as its operating channel. Client devices can then connect to the access point on the selected channel.
In wireless local area networks, access points and wireless devices set up communication between themselves, over a channel selected by the access point, using relatively short management frames. Such management frames can be successfully transmitted even when there is heavy contention for the wireless channel (since they are short they require the channel to be clear for a shorter time), and even when the channel offers a low signal-to-noise ratio (since they are sent at a low data rate).
The present inventors have seen that this behavior negatively impacts on user experience when wireless local area networks are used for Internet access.